Honestly, I find that an astounding comment. You may be familiar with Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Fast thinking relies on emotion, getting us immediately out of a situation where we have to react, whereas slow thinking relies on reason, in which we carefully weigh all the factors of a decision against the evidence and the likely outcomes. Law courts use this distinction between snap and considered judgments as a matter of course, so deprecating it as unscientific seems rather shallow.
This can all be solved if we remember the title of the book,
The Righteous Mind. Haidt was going to use the word 'moral' instead of 'righteous,' but wanted something that would "convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it's also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental." The book is not about general reasoning, but about our minds being in a divided state as we behave morally however we do, and then present the reasoning for that behavior. The divided state refers to the controlled processes of moral reasoning against the automatic processes of intuition, which is ruled by emotion. Haidt's metaphor is the rider and the elephant.
And sometimes that reasoning will be sound and sometimes it will be unsound. Sound reasoning is dispassionate, impartial, evidence based and logical. Unsound reasoning is passionate, biased, prejudiced and illogical. There is a difference.
Right, the reasoning may be sound, in that it doesn't contradict facts or is based on emotional preference, or unsound in that it does. In a transcript of an interview about the incest scene, the subject gave several reasons that were challenged by the experimenter as wrong factually. The subject kept falling back to a new defense, and he even would abandon a defense as he spoke it and realized it didn't make sense. This was all an experimental design to force people who said the brother and sister were wrong, into moral dumbfoundedness. None of reasoned, evidence-based justifications could work because of the constraints worked into the example. It really was a "harmless taboo violation." The subjects had to be responding from their strong intuitions about incest and offering their "reasoned" justifications after the fact. Note that their reasoning wasn't bad because it was emotional; it was bad because it skirted the facts. We shouldn't say that any of them were wrong in their judgment just because they couldn't give a reasoned answer. Sometimes that's just he way it is with our moral judgments: they reside deep in our emotions, though we're reluctant to admit it.
If love is reverence for the identity of something, it can be a completely rational thing. The context of the Sermon on the Mount was an unconditional love, whereby a spark of divinity is seen in everything, even in things that are corrupted and evil. It is a rational abstract love, not an emotional partiality.
But obviously love, to have come into existence at all, needs to have been emotional; that's all I meant. We get into problems when we talk about a dichotomy of reason and emotion precisely because we do judge emotions by standards of reason and rationality. If a man comes into the police station and reports he killed his wife, shows no emotion whatever about the act, and passes a test of mental functioning, we still don't conclude that he is rational. Not to show awareness that one has committed a serious moral violation is irrational. Note: I don't believe in "rational abstract love."
My use seems compatible with Haidt's as I understand him. You are saying people get dumbfounded when asked to explain why stealing drugs is wrong. I just think this example fails to consider the situation at all coherently, as to why people regard rule of law as more important than individual exceptions. 'Just this once' is the start of a slippery slope to relativism.
This is the problem with relying on someone else's summary, I guess. I said that in the "Heinz" example, people were
not morally dumbfounded because the justification they relied on most often worked for them and really couldn't be challenged on a factual basis. They would say that human life could be seen as a higher cause than property, so Heinz was not immoral in his action. We shouldn't get hung up on your slippery slope assertion because this author isn't--at this point in the book, at least--making an argument about right and wrong moral alternatives.
Yes it does make a difference. Innate reactions are hardwired into our genes, whereas learned reactions are taught and so in principle can readily be changed by rational argument.
I disagree with your "readily." Some cultural beliefs are so strong and persistent that changing them is hard, indeed. They become an integral part of the elephant. If they can be changed, is it by rational argument that this will most likely happen, or by a more empathic approach--"talking to the elephant,"-- that gets into the Humean source of our principles? Haidt quotes Hume on this point: "And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles." It can be hazardous to open ourselves to the deeper sources of another's principles, because we might find
ourselves changing unexpectedly.
Sentiment is the basis of 'fast thinking' and is essential for all quick responses. But building a theory of morality on immediate reactions is fraught with peril. It makes far more sense to consider views very carefully and build on precedent.
Haidt, as well as other scientists who call themselves moral psychologists, isn't out to 'build a theory of morality'--at least I don't think he is. He wants to be able to ascertain what is really going on in our minds when we make moral judgments, which any theory-building then would need to be based on. The ends of these scientists are probably quite different from those of traditional philosophy.
I'm finding that statement hard to comprehend. Moral reasoning is not post hoc, it starts from universal principles that have been refined by long precedent and experience and assesses actions against this framework. 'Post hoc' implies we newly invent our moral response after every event instead of having a consistent and coherent moral compass.
You can say that moral reasoning is not post hoc if you want. It isn't so much that I'm asserting that it is, as that I'm trying to present the assertions in this book. And so far, he's making sense to me as well. One of Haidt's three principles is
Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second, which says pretty clearly that our moral reasoning is the rider serving the elephant. Regarding 'universal principles,' you've already said that morals are often not universal but specific to culture. Morality gets into us somehow, merges with our feelings about who we are, which are emotional. Our moral response is not our verbal expression of principle; it has already happened before we speak, in most of daily life. We don't need to make up our response anew at each occasion; it's just the opposite--we have a very reliable means for doing morality through intuition, and as a result a moral compass that is also reliable.